Comments

Ahhh just thank you for the do over, really fair to put it this way. Enjoyed this episode much more! Blythe’s analysis was great.
Thanks for solving it this way! Props!
And I think the Amanar problem the Russians have won’t be as much of a problem when Rio comes along to be honest… Three juniors (Seda Tutkhalyan, Darya Skrypnik and Angelina Melnikova) have DTYs all of a sudden (Melnikova and Skrypnik whipped it out in the last two months, Seda has been competing it for a year), and Alla Sosnitskaya will probably get an Amanar in the next two years. I mean none of the juniors are near Bailie Key’s level, but they’re coming 😉
I do like the fact that they sort of make up the lower D scores on vault with bars and beam. Aliya, Vika and Darya Spiridonova have 6.4+ potential Ds on bars and Aliya, Vika and Maria Kharenkova have 6.3+ potential Ds on beam. So I like that! Although they probably still don’t bring in as high of a score as an Amanar would. I like them using their strengths though, as the Americans do with vault and floor. I hope they can develop that more, so it can be REALLY close at the Olympics.

My old housemate was called Liu Tingting so I saw that name and was like ?????? Haha. She was uber cute too. THE SOUNDS DURING EVAN’S EXPLANATION OF THE MAGICIAN WRISTS FLOOR ENTRANCE HAHAHHA yes. A lot of people do it yeah, but some people are doing it much more graceful than others… I agree with Uncle Tim and Jess on this one. The Romanians did a really nice arm wave when they get off the floor at Worlds and it looks really nice too.

For the GymCastic cocktail….. Something with Bailey’s? (for Bailie Key of course 😉 ). For Jess, you could just use Irish cream.
And yeah Jess I was superconfused about the pommel horse thing too! Glad that’s clarified 🙂

Love love loved the rest of the episode as well. And yes, I too love Raymond!!!

I, of course, adore Raymond White. I’ve seen his floor routine score 15.5 before so it has definitely scored higher than at Nationals, which is sad as I would have loved it if he was in event finals this year. Meanwhile, his mom says he is also trying out for Cirque. (Her twitter is @dramama82).

I generally love the show, but I have been disappointed in the fact that there has been so much NCAA coverage. I would venture to guess that women’s elite gymnastics is the most popular event, just from the coverage and tumblr blogs online. Yet you spent as much time covering men’s NCAA championships as you did on Pac Rims, one of the only team elite international competitions of the year. You spent much longer just previewing women’s NCAA championships (when you didn’t really preview Pac Rims at all). Not to mention the fact that you spent so much time on NCAA regionals last week. You didn’t talk about Bailie’s great performance, Ebee’s huge AA performance or Team USA’s general dominance.

I would be interested to know if your listeners really want so much NCAA coverage instead of elite coverage. Of course, it is your show and you clearly can do whatever makes you happy. I just appreciate everyone’s analysis so much that I really wish there was more elite coverage (even though it is a slower time in the season!)

A lot of listeners tune in strictly for the NCAA coverage! GymCastic has introduced a lot of new people to NCAA, especially the international audience who complained about lack of pretty execution in elite. Secondly, they are a GYMNASTICS podcast, so you may as well attack them for not featuring acrobatic gymnastics as for speaking too much about NCAA; they can’t cover everything but I love that they cover collegiate gymnastics and so do the athletes who compete in it and listen weekly!
I too thought that artistic gymnastics ruled over the gymnastics disciplines…that is until i took a look at the kinds of numbers rhythmic meets get on YouTube and then i discovered a whole world of rhythmic appreciation online that is completely separate from the “gymternet” which only deals with artistic. I’ve found blogs and tumblrs that get three times more views than some of my favorite places for artistic gymnastics. So, the internet is a big place; if you think it’s not there, it’s because you didn’t look for it. Besides, they are clearly excited about NCAA gymnastics so it’s not some perfunctory coverage they do for others, they really are genuine about the sport themselves, and just because you’re not interested doesn’t mean many others aren’t.

And that is fine. But there have been 3 elite competitions in the past few weeks and the NCAA coverage has far outshadowed the coverage of those competitions. I just wish they had been given a little more time.

In all honesty, I didn’t think Pac Rim was a very interesting competition other than to demonstrate the crazy dominance of the US team while other teams didn’t send very strong gymnasts. I did enjoy the wonderful performances of Bailie Key, Norah Flatley, and Nia Dennis, so those were worth mentioning. I liked some of the Chinese juniors and Canadian girls too.

However, we are in the peak of collegiate season with the NCAA Championships this weekend. Elite season is still barely beginning. This weekend is THE weekend for NCAA, so I can understand why it’s going to get a lot of coverage. After that, no more. We won’t hear a peep about NCAA for the rest of the year. Just hang in there.

First of all, thank you for the do over. It was greatly appreciated, and it was nice to hear an impartial review of a foreign team. I very much appreciate the fact that you asked for Blythe’s professional and impartial analyses instead of a certain Fake Smile blogger’s and TCG blogger’s completely partial and pro-USA analysis.

Blythe’s commentary is amazing, and she really knows how to look at everything by itself without any particular lens on, something very few gymnastics fans out there can do.

As a huge Russian fan myself, I can say that I actually almost agree with everything Blythe said. In fact, I only disagree with one point she made.

She is absolutely correct that the current reality of the gymnastics world’s situation is that Americans will keep topping the podium for at least all of this quad and all of the next quad. (I truly believe that the Americans will continue to be dominant in WAG until the Tokyo Olympics.)

HOWEVER, I strongly disagree with her solution to this problem; namely, I greatly disagree with her point that the only way to fix this is to have everyone else train Amanars. This is simply not true. Instead, I want to point to something Uncle Tim had brought up in this very podcast on one of the episodes that was released right after the World Championships last year: Vault scores are, in comparison to the other WAG apparatus’ scores, are far too high. However, this is due to a larger problem with the current way in which all around competitions are currently scored.

Uncle Tim had looked at all the data from that competition, and he came to the completely correct conclusion that compared to the other events, vault scores are way too high in WAG. My friends and I have been bemoaning this for several years now, since the “8 skills” rule was instituted back in 2009. However, vault scores have been absolutely ridiculous these past few years in comparison to the other events. I seriously believe that the FIG needs to do to WAG vault D scores what it did to MAG vault D scores last year; in that, I want the FIG to bring down every WAG vault D score by at least 0.5. This is the only way to even out the field.

I actually ran the data myself to prove that this was right. I specifically looked all around scores from 2013 World Championships and 2013 European Championships. And to prove that vault scores are being artificially inflated regardless of the Amanar, I actually took out Simone Biles’ Amanar score from the average for World.

I’ll start with World’s because those results are a little less shocking than Euros.

At World’s last year, WITHOUT Simone’s phenomenal Amanar, the average vault score in the all around was 14.403. The average for all bars scores was 13.441. The average for all beam scores was 13.270. The average for all floor scores was 13.695. I also ran the vault averages with Simone’s Amanar and got 14.463.

To make it easier to see:
Average VT (without Simone’s Amanar): 14.403
Average VT (with Simone’s Amanar): 14.4639
Average UB: 13.441
Average BB: 13.270
Average FX: 13.695

I think just the fact that vault scores are (even without Simone’s Amanar) an average of up to a full point higher than the other averages shows how inflated vault scores are. But just to make sure that the magnitude of the numbers aren’t hiding anything, I calculated the percentage increases from event to event.

VT average (without Amanar) are 7.162% higher than UB, 8.539% higher than BB, and 5.172% higher than FX. If we do the percentage increases with Simone’s Amanar, VT average is 7.610% higher than UB, 8.993% higher than BB, and 5.612% higher than FX. That in and of itself, to me at least, is an extremely shocking disparity between vault and the other events, but just to make sure that this is greater than the disparity between the other three events among each other, I calculated the percentage difference between UB, BB, and FX as well.

UB average is 1.285% greater than BB and 1.857% less than FX. BB is 3.103% less than FX. If we use this benchmark for how far apart vault scores should be from the other events, at most, by statistical methods, VT scores should be no greater than 3.5% different from the other events.

However, VT scores are anywhere between 5.6% and 9% different from the other events. This is statistically unacceptable. Because of this data, I came to the conclusion that VT score are artificially inflated.

However, if that isn’t enough data to convince you, I actually ran the numbers from Euros last year, too.

I want to preface my Euros analysis by saying that Guilia Steingruber had a 6.2 vault (scored a 15.066, which was only 0.033 higher than the second highest vault score), which is relatively close to the 6.3 of the Amanr, AND by saying that Angelina Kysla of Ukraine got a 0.000 for her vault score. Since Steingruber’s VT D score was so close to the Amanar D score, I took her score out when calculating averages. At first, I only did two different averages to this. I did one just without Steingruber’s 6.2 and one without both Steingruber’s 6.2 and Kysla’s 0.000. The results here are shocking, even moreso than those of World’s.

Average VT (without Steingruber): 13.444
Average VT (without Steingruber and Kysla): 14.029
Now, before I list the averages for the others, I wanted to point out what a shocking difference this is between these two averages. I just wanted to see something, so I ran the average with ALL vault scores, including both Steingruber and Kysla and got 13.509.

Now, to me, the most shocking thing about the above data is that EVEN WITH the 0.000, the average VT score is greater than the other three events. There was not a single score below at least 10 on the other three events, and the vault average is STILL greater than the other three. If that doesn’t shock everyone looking at these numbers, I don’t know what will.

But just to make sure that the deviation was really as great as it seemed, I ran the percentages as well.

Firstly, I looked at the “controls” with just the bars, beam, and floor.

Bars are 3.211% greater than BB and 1.843% greater than FX, and BB is 1.325% less than FX. Given this, statistically speaking, VT scores should be no more than 3.5% greater than any of the other events.

Now, looking just at Average VT scores without Steingruber and Kysla:
VT scores are 3.919% greater than UB, 7.256% greater than BB, and 5.834% greater than FX.

CLEARLY, all of these instances pass the 3.5% mark that VT scores are allowed to be greater than.

However, if that wasn’t enough, I looked at the VT scores without Kysla’s 0.000 but with Steingruber’s 15.066:

VT scores were 4.239% greater than UB, 7.856% greater than BB, and 6.160% greater than FX.

Again, statistically speaking, VT scores should be no higher than 3.5% over the other three events, but they are much greater.

People can make whatever conclusions they want from this data, but my main conclusion is that since VT scores are so much higher than they are allowed to be EVEN WITHOUT HIGH D SCORE VAULTS, it shows that vault as an apparatus is extremely overscored.

This is one of the biggest reasons why all around scores have been skewed these past few years, and this is something that needs to be fixed as soon as possible.

Obviously, there are two different ways to fix this right off the bat: Either lower E scores or lower D scores. Personally, I think lowering D scores is the more logical step since it was already done MAG. As the precedent is already there, I see no reason why the FIG shouldn’t follow suit and bring down every vault’s D score by at least 0.5. The other way to do this is to lower E scores, which could be done by doubling or tripling deductions. However, lowering E scores is not uniform because every gymnast will get a different amount of deductions; rather, if we want for all vault scores to be uniformly scored, D scores need to be lowered for ALL vaults.

Now, before people go into an uproar and say that this will cause more girls to do Produnovas, I want to mention something. After London, the FIG brought down every single VT D score in MAG by a FULL POINT. That’s even more drastic that the 0.5-0.6 that I’m suggesting for WAG. But despite this HUGE downgrade, we haven’t seen any appreciable number of male gymnasts attempting vaults that they simply can’t do. Rather, they’ve actually, and I’m sure Uncle Tim can vouch for this, just worked on nailing their execution on the vaults that they can already do in order to not allow the judges to take anything away from them. Considering the fact that biologically speaking female gymnasts don’t have as much power generation capabilities, on average, than male gymnasts, there is absolutely no reason for the females to be attempting that which the males aren’t even doing.

However, these aren’t the only solutions. The CHIEF reason that this problem exists in the first place is that ever since the open ended scoring system was created and put up for the sport, it has taken away the ability for all events to be scored out of the same maximum. Back then, as we all know, all events were out of 10.000. But now, each and every event is, theoretically, out of infinity since D scores don’t have an upper bound. There is a mathematical proof that every single infinity has a different “magnitude”. Since every single infinity has a different magnitude, it is impossible to make all four (or six for MAG) events out of the same maximum score with this scoring system like we used to have with the 10.000.

Actually, I didn’t even realize all of this until I had read a post someone had written a long time ago. He explained it all very well, and he actually came up with what I think is a better way statistically and mathematically to score all around competitions. It evens out the different magnitudes of maximum scores for each event in a very unique way. I really think that his scoring system is the only way to ensure that all the events are equally weighted in the overall all around score.

And just a note on how some people are a bit miffed about the amount of NCAA on gymcastic. Gymcastic is a GYMNASTICS podcast, NOT an “elite gymnastics podcast”. As this is the case, I don’t see any reason why they should not cover NCAA in as much depth as they do. I personally am not a huge fan of NCAA, but I honestly don’t mind how much NCAA gymcastic covers. They can freely cover as much gymnastics from a variety of sources as they want as long as they cover it all FARILY (which they did not do last week with the Tokyo World Cup and Russian Nationals, but I suppose it’s time to move on from the past).

First of all, thank you for the do over. It was greatly appreciated, and it was nice to hear an impartial review of a foreign team. I very much appreciate the fact that you asked for Blythe’s professional and impartial analyses instead of a certain Fake Smile blogger’s and TCG blogger’s completely partial and pro-USA analysis.

Blythe’s commentary is amazing, and she really knows how to look at everything by itself without any particular lens on, something very few gymnastics fans out there can do.

As a huge Russian fan myself, I can say that I actually almost agree with everything Blythe said. In fact, I only disagree with one point she made.

She is absolutely correct that the current reality of the gymnastics world’s situation is that Americans will keep topping the podium for at least all of this quad and all of the next quad. (I truly believe that the Americans will continue to be dominant in WAG until the Tokyo Olympics.)

HOWEVER, I strongly disagree with her solution to this problem; namely, I greatly disagree with her point that the only way to fix this is to have everyone else train Amanars. This is simply not true. Instead, I want to point to something Uncle Tim had brought up in this very podcast on one of the episodes that was released right after the World Championships last year: Vault scores are, in comparison to the other WAG apparatus’ scores, are far too high. However, this is due to a larger problem with the current way in which all around competitions are currently scored.

Uncle Tim had looked at all the data from that competition, and he came to the completely correct conclusion that compared to the other events, vault scores are way too high in WAG. My friends and I have been bemoaning this for several years now, since the “8 skills” rule was instituted back in 2009. However, vault scores have been absolutely ridiculous these past few years in comparison to the other events. I seriously believe that the FIG needs to do to WAG vault D scores what it did to MAG vault D scores last year; in that, I want the FIG to bring down every WAG vault D score by at least 0.5. This is the only way to even out the field.

I actually ran the data myself to prove that this was right. I specifically looked all around scores from 2013 World Championships and 2013 European Championships. And to prove that vault scores are being artificially inflated regardless of the Amanar, I actually took out Simone Biles’ Amanar score from the average for World.

I’ll start with World’s because those results are a little less shocking than Euros.

At World’s last year, WITHOUT Simone’s phenomenal Amanar, the average vault score in the all around was 14.403. The average for all bars scores was 13.441. The average for all beam scores was 13.270. The average for all floor scores was 13.695. I also ran the vault averages with Simone’s Amanar and got 14.463.

To make it easier to see:
Average VT (without Simone’s Amanar): 14.403
Average VT (with Simone’s Amanar): 14.4639
Average UB: 13.441
Average BB: 13.270
Average FX: 13.695

I think just the fact that vault scores are (even without Simone’s Amanar) an average of up to a full point higher than the other averages shows how inflated vault scores are. But just to make sure that the magnitude of the numbers aren’t hiding anything, I calculated the percentage increases from event to event.

VT average (without Amanar) are 7.162% higher than UB, 8.539% higher than BB, and 5.172% higher than FX. If we do the percentage increases with Simone’s Amanar, VT average is 7.610% higher than UB, 8.993% higher than BB, and 5.612% higher than FX. That in and of itself, to me at least, is an extremely shocking disparity between vault and the other events, but just to make sure that this is greater than the disparity between the other three events among each other, I calculated the percentage difference between UB, BB, and FX as well.

UB average is 1.285% greater than BB and 1.857% less than FX. BB is 3.103% less than FX. If we use this benchmark for how far apart vault scores should be from the other events, at most, by statistical methods, VT scores should be no greater than 3.5% different from the other events.

However, VT scores are anywhere between 5.6% and 9% different from the other events. This is statistically unacceptable. Because of this data, I came to the conclusion that VT score are artificially inflated.

However, if that isn’t enough data to convince you, I actually ran the numbers from Euros last year, too.

I want to preface my Euros analysis by saying that Guilia Steingruber had a 6.2 vault (scored a 15.066, which was only 0.033 higher than the second highest vault score), which is relatively close to the 6.3 of the Amanr, AND by saying that Angelina Kysla of Ukraine got a 0.000 for her vault score. Since Steingruber’s VT D score was so close to the Amanar D score, I took her score out when calculating averages. At first, I only did two different averages to this. I did one just without Steingruber’s 6.2 and one without both Steingruber’s 6.2 and Kysla’s 0.000. The results here are shocking, even moreso than those of World’s.

Average VT (without Steingruber): 13.444
Average VT (without Steingruber and Kysla): 14.029
Now, before I list the averages for the others, I wanted to point out what a shocking difference this is between these two averages. I just wanted to see something, so I ran the average with ALL vault scores, including both Steingruber and Kysla and got 13.509.

Now, to me, the most shocking thing about the above data is that EVEN WITH the 0.000, the average VT score is greater than the other three events. There was not a single score below at least 10 on the other three events, and the vault average is STILL greater than the other three. If that doesn’t shock everyone looking at these numbers, I don’t know what will.

But just to make sure that the deviation was really as great as it seemed, I ran the percentages as well.

Firstly, I looked at the “controls” with just the bars, beam, and floor.

Bars are 3.211% greater than BB and 1.843% greater than FX, and BB is 1.325% less than FX. Given this, statistically speaking, VT scores should be no more than 3.5% greater than any of the other events.

Now, looking just at Average VT scores without Steingruber and Kysla:
VT scores are 3.919% greater than UB, 7.256% greater than BB, and 5.834% greater than FX.

CLEARLY, all of these instances pass the 3.5% mark that VT scores are allowed to be greater than.

However, if that wasn’t enough, I looked at the VT scores without Kysla’s 0.000 but with Steingruber’s 15.066:

VT scores were 4.239% greater than UB, 7.856% greater than BB, and 6.160% greater than FX.

Again, statistically speaking, VT scores should be no higher than 3.5% over the other three events, but they are much greater.

People can make whatever conclusions they want from this data, but my main conclusion is that since VT scores are so much higher than they are allowed to be EVEN WITHOUT HIGH D SCORE VAULTS, it shows that vault as an apparatus is extremely overscored.

This is one of the biggest reasons why all around scores have been skewed these past few years, and this is something that needs to be fixed as soon as possible.

Obviously, there are two different ways to fix this right off the bat: Either lower E scores or lower D scores. Personally, I think lowering D scores is the more logical step since it was already done MAG. As the precedent is already there, I see no reason why the FIG shouldn’t follow suit and bring down every vault’s D score by at least 0.5. The other way to do this is to lower E scores, which could be done by doubling or tripling deductions. However, lowering E scores is not uniform because every gymnast will get a different amount of deductions; rather, if we want for all vault scores to be uniformly scored, D scores need to be lowered for ALL vaults.

Now, before people go into an uproar and say that this will cause more girls to do Produnovas, I want to mention something. After London, the FIG brought down every single VT D score in MAG by a FULL POINT. That’s even more drastic that the 0.5-0.6 that I’m suggesting for WAG. But despite this HUGE downgrade, we haven’t seen any appreciable number of male gymnasts attempting vaults that they simply can’t do. Rather, they’ve actually, and I’m sure Uncle Tim can vouch for this, just worked on nailing their execution on the vaults that they can already do in order to not allow the judges to take anything away from them. Considering the fact that biologically speaking female gymnasts don’t have as much power generation capabilities, on average, than male gymnasts, there is absolutely no reason for the females to be attempting that which the males aren’t even doing.

However, these aren’t the only solutions. The CHIEF reason that this problem exists in the first place is that ever since the open ended scoring system was created and put up for the sport, it has taken away the ability for all events to be scored out of the same maximum. Back then, as we all know, all events were out of 10.000. But now, each and every event is, theoretically, out of infinity since D scores don’t have an upper bound. There is a mathematical proof that every single infinity has a different “magnitude”. Since every single infinity has a different magnitude, it is impossible to make all four (or six for MAG) events out of the same maximum score with this scoring system like we used to have with the 10.000.

Actually, I didn’t even realize all of this until I had read a post someone had written a long time ago. He explained it all very well, and he actually came up with what I think is a better way statistically and mathematically to score all around competitions. It evens out the different magnitudes of maximum scores for each event in a very unique way. I really think that his scoring system is the only way to ensure that all the events are equally weighted in the overall all around score.

And just a note on how some people are a bit miffed about the amount of NCAA on gymcastic. Gymcastic is a GYMNASTICS podcast, NOT an “elite gymnastics podcast”. As this is the case, I don’t see any reason why they should not cover NCAA in as much depth as they do. I personally am not a huge fan of NCAA, but I honestly don’t mind how much NCAA gymcastic covers. They can freely cover as much gymnastics from a variety of sources as they want as long as they cover it all FARILY (which they did not do last week with the Tokyo World Cup and Russian Nationals, but I suppose it’s time to move on from the past).

It’s not the D scores that are the problem though, it’s the E scores. Amanars and DTYs get relatively more gifted than say, an FTY, even if the FTY was far better and everyone and their mom could see. Judges should understand that they do not need to gift just because the vault is difficult – that’s what the D judges are for.

It is most definitely the E-scores on vault that are the real problem. It’s the only event where you see a lot of scores over 9.0 especially on the more difficult vaults. A lot of gymnasts seem to get 9.0 just for chucking an Amanar to their feet. Meanwhile, a 9.0 on any of the three events is very tough to achieve even for outstanding routines.

But see, if the problem was with just the E scores on vault (meaning that E score were artificially inflated with vaults of D scores of 6+), then the averages presented above for vault scores wouldn’t be so high since they were calculated WITHOUT the 6+ D vaults. The highest D score vault considered above was the DTY at 5.8. Both Steingruber’s Rudi AND Biles’ Amanar were thrown out when calculating those numbers.

Since the averages are so high even without the higher scoring vaults, it shows that the problem is with the D scores, not the E scores.

And I think the reason for this is that vault only takes about three seconds. Gymnasts only have three seconds to make mistakes in the execution department. However, for the other three events, routines are anywhere from thirty seconds to ninety seconds. Since these routines are so much longer time-wise, there is a much higher chance for the gymnast to incur deductions, which causes a much lower E score even though some of these events (especially bars) have higher D scores than vault.

The only way to even out the playing field is to bring down all vault D scores.

You should do the math and not try to reason through that – the vault scores are higher in terms of E – by a lot. However, I posted a long comment below on why I don’t think the vault D or higher E scores matter – since they tend not to actually differentiate the gymnasts or teams as much as the other pieces (by numbers).

Here are the E scores averages for the top 50 athlete’s first vault in the qualification for all-around finals. In parenthesis is the number of vaults competed of that style. The first segment includes all vaults (includes falls).

So sure you can say that the lower difficulty vaults score less in E – but perhaps they should. Only a few gymnasts really get amplitude, distance and have great form on the block and different phases of the vault. I think they should be rewarded for their excellent vaults, in terms of E. The difference you were looking for (amanar versus non-yurchenko) is 0.794 – the limitation here is you're comparing two amazing vaults against a mix of decent vaults, none of which really compare to the two. Is the difference worth 0.794 in E? If you compare Steingruber's vault, which has a little too much pike after the block, flexed feet throughout the salto and not less distance than the two amanars, the difference is 0.379 so 4 tenths. This seems on the scale of reasonable to insane, pretty reasonable.

I counted a fall as anything that ~1.8 in deductions, since I didn't want to track down all 50 girls' vaults. The two amanars and the rudi scored much better than most vaults, but those girls certainly have power and probably don't lose much there. I suspect the other vaults probably get height and distance deductions since they can't do very difficult vaults.

Ah – I also have wondered if ranking the teams by their total scores per event would be a better solution to scoring – the problems are, as people pointed out on the tumbler you linked to, is that no one would know what their athlete needs to win and that would totally confuse the four year fans. I did go back and do this while ago and the only big upset from past competitions that I can remember is team China WAG would have won the 2010 team competition over Russia – the all around changes a bit to knock down athletes who make a terrible mistake (I like this most about this system, ranking the gymnasts by scores allows the gymnast to use the code to their advantage but she/he should fall or have a big break OR have a very weak piece – I’m thinking Max Whitlock’s Rings – they would never contend for the top).

However, I have to disagree with comments regarding both the E and the D scores for vault (concerning individual AA not team) and the necessity to change the scoring – it’s my observation that the athletes capable of big vaults tend to do them very very well, earning those top E marks, but I’m not a judge, so I can’t comment on how to make judging more fair in anyway. So I looked at the numbers, and I discovered what actually separates the all-around pack is the other three events in WAG. If you look at the top 50 qualifiers in Antwerp 2013 WAG (I didn’t go farther than that), the average E scores are 8.810, 7.820, 7.427, and 7.542 (VT, UB, BB, FX) – so YES vault is higher scoring on average – but it’s the difference that really counts. If you look at the averages of those who were the top 24 in quals versus the bottom 26 (in the top 50), the top 24 have higher E scores across ALL EVENTS – and the BIGGEST difference in execution occurs on the other three events. The top 24 had an 8.944 VT, 8.048 UB, 7.754 BB and 7.952 FX while the bottom 26 (in the top 50) had 8.687 VT, 7.609 UB, 7.125, 7.164 FX. The VT E score difference (-0.266), by the numbers, doesn’t separate the pack so much as floor does (-0.788) in terms of E.

Another observation: In the top 50 qualifiers, one woman competed a vault 7 or above, but she didn’t make it into the top 24 because she barely broke 5 on the other events and averaged 7.0 in execution. Three girls (Biles, Maroney and Steingruber) competed a vault greater than the DTY and made it into the top 10 qualifiers – but they also had difficulty on each apparatus above the average difficulty of the top 24 on the other three pieces. The #7 qualifier, Shang Chunsong only had a DTY – but she had monster difficulty on the other three pieces. Looking at winners this quad, the top AA gymnast had a monster vault but also top difficulty across the other three events (in fact they tend to appear in multiple event finals). Beyond these observations, the top 24 actually have higher difficulty than the rest of the competitors across all four events. The top 24 in Antwerp competed 5.575, 5.821, 5.850, and 5.746 whereas the bottom 26 (of the top 50) competed an average difficulty of 5.027, 5.164, 5.277 and 5.158 (VT, UB, BB, FX respect).

So vault really isn’t the problem for individual all-around. The top group actually competes more difficult work on bars beam and floor, and they out compete the field across all four events – but they make their biggest strides ahead by performing well on floor (in terms in E).

In team final, I am less sure about the role of the vault – In London 2012, China (WAG – sorry I only have numbers for WAG), was the only team that scored higher as a team on an apparatus other than vault (bars, duh). There are less numbers to work with here since only 12 teams competed so I broke it into three comparisons: Big 4 vs 5-12. Top six teams versus bottom six teams in qualifications. Qualifiers (1-8) and bottom 4.
Big 4 vs 5-12:
The Big 4, on average, outscored the world by 3.00 points on vault, 2.701 points on UB, 4.386 points on BB and 1.571 points on FX. Notice there are no negative numbers here – the top four teams in the world outscore the rest of the world on all of the events, beam being the biggest asset
Top Six versus Bottom Six:
The top six outscored the bottom six by 1.922 on VT, 3.493 on UB, 3.347 on BB and 1.21 on FX.
Top 8 qualifiers versus the four teams that did not move on to finals: Difference, 1.584 pts VT, 3.015 Pts UB, 2.603 PTS BB and 1.779 pts FX.
Although vault is high scoring, it seems the top teams separate themselves from the other teams by how well they do on bars and beam. The world seems pretty even on vault and FX.

Finally – team USA versus Team Russia – I used quals again since Russia had a miserable FX in team finals. USA outscored Russia on VT, BB and FX: 1.334, 2.09 and 0.425 (respectively). Russia outscored USA on UB by 0.534. Even if USA’s monster VT score was abolished, they beat Russia by enough on the other two events to make up for how badly Russia beats them on bars.

So final thought: I don’t think there is a single thing we can change about the sport (the vault) to make the competition closer. aaaaaaaaaand I hope someone actually reads this…

I read it all, and I absolutely understand your point, and if I’m not mistaken, based solely on how the FIG has approached scoring these past few years, they’re okay with the discrepancies here. And if you are, too, that is totally fine. Everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion. 🙂

However, you must allow me to respectfully disagree with your assertions. I for one actually agree that the harder vaults should be getting higher E scores because you have the right point: The girls who are doing these harder vaults ARE doing them perfectly. And if their execution is as perfect as it is, then they need to be duly rewarded (however, what judges in their right mind gave Aliya a 9.166 E score for her Amanot? Even as a HUGE fan of Mustafina, I’m appalled that she scored so high.)

But since we’re leaving E scores alone, then I maintain that D scores should all be brought down (if we agree that the AA scoring system shouldn’t be changed). And honestly, if all vaults are brought down by about 0.5, then there is no reason that anyone will be unduly rewarded since everyone is still on the same level playing field. Once again, I point to the MAG example. Through the London-London quad, vault scores were, on average for MAG, about 0.8 to 1.3 higher than all of the other events. And this is without taking into consideration the fact that vault D scores were usually at least 0.3 lower than the other events. The fact of the matter is that vault takes so little time, so compared to the other events, it has the least deductions. Even if you compare the E scores of the top gymnasts across each of their own events: on average (using your numbers), VT E scores hugely outnumber the other events’ E scores. And since we already established that this is okay (because vault doesn’t give time to give many deductions; it is simply the nature of the apparatus), then we need to look at other ways to even out the playing field.

If we bring down vault D scores, then we will see the averages in the statistically permissible disparity (which I ran through various statistical deviation tests. Unfortunately, I don’t have those numbers with me because I forgot to save them, or I would publish those, too).

Honestly, though, I think we need to have a discussion first that isn’t even related to changing scores: Do we want to rely on what math tells us or not rely on what math tells us as being an acceptable disparity across events (which I calculated above using the statistical test for deviation). I personally believe that as long as we are using a mathematical system, then yes, we DO need to rely on what math tells us is the correct disparity.

And using this belief, I firmly believe that either all WAG VT scores need to be decreased.

However, despite understanding your problems with his scoring system for the AA, I must admit that I’m not convinced by your arguments.

Who cares what non-fans think about the scoring system for our sport? As fans (and as the sport’s administration), it is our duty to make sure that we are giving every single gymnast the correct score based solely on how they perform; whether or not four years fans understand it be damned. Also, who in their right mind thinks that the current scoring system is logical when they first become a fan anyway? It takes time to go through the code and understand every single intricacy if you want to be a fan. I don’t see any problem requiring those who choose to be fans to spend more time doing so.

I’m also not taken by the point that “it doesn’t matter anyway because the results don’t change”. I strongly disagree. Aliya Mustafina would NOT have won bronze in the London AA with this new scoring system because it doesn’t allow mistakes to be masked. Similarly, Rebecca Bross would NOT have won bronze in the Rotterdam AA. Japan would not have won silver in the MAG London TF. Russia would not have won the Rotterdam WAG TF. Jordyn Wieber would not be the 2011 World AA Champion (I personally believe that was a fluke regardless, but whatever). It DOES matter. Right now, at least in my opinion, the best “all around” gymnasts aren’t be treated as such with the current scoring system because huge mistakes on one event (Aliya Mustafina London AA; Jordyn Wieber Tokyo AA; Rebecca Bross Rotterdam AA; Rebecca Bross London 2009 AA; Russia 2010 TF; Japan 2012 MAG TF; Japan 2011 MAG TF; Japan 2012 MAG TF; USA 2012 MAG QF and TF) are being masked on other events. At least in my opinion, an “all around” gymnast should be he or she, or team, that is equally the best at ALL events. But everyone is, of course, entitled to his or her own opinion.

Also, I don’t think this is just a Russia vs. USA issue honestly. This is also affecting other teams. I mentioned Japan in 2012 MAG TF. Ukraine has been suffering funding problems for years now for their artistic gymnastics program, but think what a boost it could have been to their program if they had won the bronze? This also happened with Japan’s MAG team in the 2011 TF. They had so many mistakes but still won silver. If they had been duly penalized, Russia would have won bronze and USA silver, and BOTH countries desperately need funding and publicity for their MAG teams.

Now before someone comes to the false conclusion that this is only an MAG program. I’m going to point out Rebecca Bross in 2010 AA again. If she had been duly penalized, China would have won silver and bronze that year in the AA. China, too, need publicity for their program. Let’s look at Aliya Mustafina in 2012 AA. If she had been duly penalized, Izbasa would have finished fourth. Think of how that could have helped the Romanian program. Now what if Bross was penalized correctly in the 2009 AA? Lauren Mitchell would have won bronze! Also, in London 2012, China would have gotten the team bronze instead of Romania. My point here is that it DOES make a difference, and that difference could have a lot of consequences long-term.

But, again, it is up to one’s own opinion. I personally am of the belief that things need to change, but in no way should my opinion be considered to be more important than anyone else’s. But I really do think that we as a gymnastics community need to promulgate this discussion a bit more.

Thanks for reading!!!!!!! and disagreeing actually, I see where your points are coming from.

Regarding the ranking system – I personally am a fan making such a change for the sport (I believe it to be more fair! – perhaps my communication sucked), and mentioned China WAG taking gold in 2010 and some all-around knock downs, but thanks for doing so many rerankings – it’s interesting to see and I think that such a ranking would help heal many of the gymternet’s wounds. Thanks also for MAG rankings which I didn’t look into at all.

Regarding the publicity of the sport – gym fans definitely support the sport, but are we big enough to bring in the money gymnastics needs to survive as an international and Olympic sport? My guess is that when the four year fans tune in for the Olympics, the various organizations, IOC and the broadcast companies, make all of their money off of the sport. Now there is no way to know for sure that four year fans would no longer tune in with the golf-rank change – but my assumption is that if the sport loses enough money making potential, it will die on broadcast television and whither into nothing. Right now some college gymnastics programs are struggling over keeping their gymnastics programs since they’re essentially a huge money sink for the school. I don’t want that to happen for gymnastics, desperately. So I’m in favor for fairness, but not in favor overall for the fear of losing gymnastics. Hope this clears up the thought.

Regarding making the playing field more even – I still think only the ranking system would do that. If you reduce all the vaults by whatever amount so they all score less – still receiving higher E scores – but more in line with total scores of the other three pieces – nothing will happen… As I pointed out, the top gymnasts are the top gymnasts on multiple pieces. They tend to have higher difficulty on all four pieces than the average difficulty being competed in the final – and they also tend to have higher execution across all four pieces. Same for teams – that’s the point I’m trying to make.

Regarding Russia vs USA, sorry for making it seem like I was making into another one of those overly dramatic gymternet squabbles, but my point there was supposed to be – that amongst the two top teams, vault didn’t matter. It was just supposed to be another example that although vault is high scoring in D and E, the scores tend to be high across the board so the difference wont sink the team. But, my other point is that it’s not so clear for teams or team building. Obviously a girl with a good vault gets on the team over a girl with other talents for team final (Paseka VT over Dementieva BB/FX is the clearest example). In Quals taking just the latter three pieces, two changes happen. Japan qualifies as a team over GBR and Australia (big change) would have beaten Canada and Germany to be eighth, making it into the final. My original USA/RUS example was just to be a case, that the difficult vaults don’t guarantee a win – but other results show vaulting played a role in Canada’s berth to the finals (Australia was ahead of Canada by 0.126 total using UB BB and FX).

So I would concede that lowering the vault scores could change the way teams comes up with their worlds team. Perhaps we would see more diversity on bars, beam and floor following such a change, but I can’t agree that changing vault D scores would dramatically change the playing field. I suspect the big four would still be the big four.

Oh no! my comment didn’t post – but perhaps it will show up twice or something?

First – Thanks for reading and for disagreeing! I understand where a lot of your points are coming from and I want to clearify a few of my thoughts, since we agree on some things. And YES YES YES, we need to talk about it this more as a community of fans of gymnastics.

The golf-ranking system of gymnasts: I love how fair this would be. Qualifications would be a total mess, ranking hundreds of gymnasts for their golf score all-around, but I see it as being fair. Like I said – it punishes those who make a mistake (I deleted my spreadsheet of reranking a long time ago, so thanks for posting the AA girls and MAG info – all I remembered was China.)

So for fairness, I’m totally 100% in. But my major concern is that it will kill gymnastics – since I believe most of the money that gymnastics makes as an olympic sport comes from the four year fans and not us. My worry is if the ranking system turns off those tuning in for the olympics, less and less gymnastics would broadcasted and then athletes would lose interest in the sport as a generation of young boys and girls do not grow up with exposure. Maybe my view here is biased since I’m in the US, and no longer do I even have friends from my old gym – I’m too old! Maybe gymnastics could survive outside the US, but I would be seriously crushed if that happened.

This is how I have come to think about the vault scores – they aren’t the thing to change. Vault potential definitely affects team building (Paseka picked for London over Dementieva or Nabieva) because of the high scoring potential (slightly higher D and much higher E) – so if the argument is, lower the scores on vault so that we see more diversity and stronger bars, beam and floor sets – yes, I’m on board with that.

But changing the vault scores would not change AA and team rankings as much. My point with all the math was that the top gymnasts and teams have higher scores on all four pieces, not just vault. For teams – in addition to team building consideration – whether or not vault plays a major role in the rankings is less clear to me. If you look at just UB, BB and FX from London teams, two changes occur: 1) Japan enters the final ranked higher than Great Britain. 2) Australia advances to the final (they were ahead of Canada by 0.126 when counting bars, beam and vault). What I take away from this is that the better vaulting teams do not necessarily have an advantage – the teams must make strides on all of the events. This was supposed to be my point about USA/RUS in quals:

(Sorry for drudging up a Russia/USA gymternet argument – that wasn’t supposed to be my point)

My point there was just show that a stronger vault team didn’t ensure the 1st place finish – it’s not as if the Russia outscored the US on all three of the other pieces and US was just ahead on vault. They put up higher scores on BB and FX as well.

Thanks for the response! And I’m glad that we can continue to have a civil discussion about this! 🙂

You’re absolutely right, qualifications will be a hot mess in terms of who qualifies for what. And we will have no idea what the final rankings are until absolutely everyone is done. But honestly, I think fairness is a lot more important than not working through the numbers and waiting until the end. We are fans who have the patience to wait through Tim Daggett’s worthless commentary for hours on end… I think we have the patience to wait until the end of the competition to know the actual results LOL.

But seriously, I think fairness here is a lot more important than the waiting until the end thing.

As for potentially killing gymnastics, I really don’t think it will do anything of the sort. Honestly, if you look at what four year fans want out of watching the sport during the Olympics, it’s just entertainment. And as long as the sport is being shown in prime time with Tim Daggett and Al Trautwig raving against those dastardly commie Russians, the entertainment factor will still be there. And as long as the faux patriotism that NBC thrusts onto its viewers at this time of year still exists, which it clearly will considering what ends they go to get their ratings, I don’t think it will be a problem.

From my (admittedly very crude) observations, what makes or breaks a sport’s popularity is not the complexity of it. If it was lack of complexity in scoring systems that made a sport so popular, why the hell is tennis so popular? And why is American football so popular despite all those random rules about off-sides, sacking, etc. To an outside observer, none of these seemingly arbitrary rules make any sense. Hell let’s go one step further to the second most popular sport in the world: Cricket. I forget the exact number, but cricket has a Book of Laws that has something like 400 pages, yet it still has something like 2.5 billion people worldwide who follow it like a damn religion!

Given all this, I don’t think simpleness is what makes a sport popular; rather, it’s just publicity and visibility. Unfortunately right now in most of the world, the only visibility that sports like gymnastics get is during the Olympics. If their “host networks” showed meets more regularly and broadcast them whenever and wherever they were happening, the sport would be a LOT more popular in the general public. I guarantee it because it’s exactly for this reason that ice hockey, American football, soccer, cricket, tennis, etc. are all popular sports even though their books of rules are so damn long. It’s publicity, not simplicity.

Sure, the basic principles of all these sports might be simple, but the actual gameplay is a lot more complex. And if you ask me, the absolute basic principle of maintaining your balance on a four inch beam is a lot simpler than the basic principle of throwing an orange ball into a partial basket x feet off the ground.

It is nice that we agree on the merits of the “golf-scoring” system for gymnastics that was pointed above. 🙂

I see what you mean about vault scores not necessarily being too high now. I do see that these high scoring gymnasts/teams score high on all events, but I still don’t think that’s the right way to address this problem, and I do believe it is a problem. I already mentioned that a lot of rankings would change under the golf-score system, but if you bring down all the VT D scores, I know for a fact that Mustafina would have placed in London. Of course, you can run a lot of different numbers and get various results, but that is food for thought.

I maintain that it is a problem that should be addressed about VT D scores. But of course, we can agree to disagree here. 🙂

I read it all, and I absolutely understand your point, and if I’m not mistaken, based solely on how the FIG has approached scoring these past few years, they’re okay with the discrepancies here. And if you are, too, that is totally fine. Everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion. 🙂

However, you must allow me to respectfully disagree with your assertions. I for one actually agree that the harder vaults should be getting higher E scores because you have the right point: The girls who are doing these harder vaults ARE doing them perfectly. And if their execution is as perfect as it is, then they need to be duly rewarded (however, what judges in their right mind gave Aliya a 9.166 E score for her Amanot? Even as a HUGE fan of Mustafina, I’m appalled that she scored so high.)

But since we’re leaving E scores alone, then I maintain that D scores should all be brought down (if we agree that the AA scoring system shouldn’t be changed). And honestly, if all vaults are brought down by about 0.5, then there is no reason that anyone will be unduly rewarded since everyone is still on the same level playing field. Once again, I point to the MAG example. Through the London-London quad, vault scores were, on average for MAG, about 0.8 to 1.3 higher than all of the other events. And this is without taking into consideration the fact that vault D scores were usually at least 0.3 lower than the other events. The fact of the matter is that vault takes so little time, so compared to the other events, it has the least deductions. Even if you compare the E scores of the top gymnasts across each of their own events: on average (using your numbers), VT E scores hugely outnumber the other events’ E scores. And since we already established that this is okay (because vault doesn’t give time to give many deductions; it is simply the nature of the apparatus), then we need to look at other ways to even out the playing field.

If we bring down vault D scores, then we will see the averages in the statistically permissible disparity (which I ran through various statistical deviation tests. Unfortunately, I don’t have those numbers with me because I forgot to save them, or I would publish those, too).

Honestly, though, I think we need to have a discussion first that isn’t even related to changing scores: Do we want to rely on what math tells us or not rely on what math tells us as being an acceptable disparity across events (which I calculated above using the statistical test for deviation). I personally believe that as long as we are using a mathematical system, then yes, we DO need to rely on what math tells us is the correct disparity.

And using this belief, I firmly believe that either all WAG VT scores need to be decreased.

However, despite understanding your problems with his scoring system for the AA, I must admit that I’m not convinced by your arguments.

Who cares what non-fans think about the scoring system for our sport? As fans (and as the sport’s administration), it is our duty to make sure that we are giving every single gymnast the correct score based solely on how they perform; whether or not four years fans understand it be damned. Also, who in their right mind thinks that the current scoring system is logical when they first become a fan anyway? It takes time to go through the code and understand every single intricacy if you want to be a fan. I don’t see any problem requiring those who choose to be fans to spend more time doing so.

I’m also not taken by the point that “it doesn’t matter anyway because the results don’t change”. I strongly disagree. Aliya Mustafina would NOT have won bronze in the London AA with this new scoring system because it doesn’t allow mistakes to be masked. Similarly, Rebecca Bross would NOT have won bronze in the Rotterdam AA. Japan would not have won silver in the MAG London TF. Russia would not have won the Rotterdam WAG TF. Jordyn Wieber would not be the 2011 World AA Champion (I personally believe that was a fluke regardless, but whatever). It DOES matter. Right now, at least in my opinion, the best “all around” gymnasts aren’t be treated as such with the current scoring system because huge mistakes on one event (Aliya Mustafina London AA; Jordyn Wieber Tokyo AA; Rebecca Bross Rotterdam AA; Rebecca Bross London 2009 AA; Russia 2010 TF; Japan 2012 MAG TF; Japan 2011 MAG TF; Japan 2012 MAG TF; USA 2012 MAG QF and TF) are being masked on other events. At least in my opinion, an “all around” gymnast should be he or she, or team, that is equally the best at ALL events. But everyone is, of course, entitled to his or her own opinion.

Also, I don’t think this is just a Russia vs. USA issue honestly. This is also affecting other teams. I mentioned Japan in 2012 MAG TF. Ukraine has been suffering funding problems for years now for their artistic gymnastics program, but think what a boost it could have been to their program if they had won the bronze? This also happened with Japan’s MAG team in the 2011 TF. They had so many mistakes but still won silver. If they had been duly penalized, Russia would have won bronze and USA silver, and BOTH countries desperately need funding and publicity for their MAG teams.

Now before someone comes to the false conclusion that this is only an MAG program. I’m going to point out Rebecca Bross in 2010 AA again. If she had been duly penalized, China would have won silver and bronze that year in the AA. China, too, need publicity for their program. Let’s look at Aliya Mustafina in 2012 AA. If she had been duly penalized, Izbasa would have finished fourth. Think of how that could have helped the Romanian program. Now what if Bross was penalized correctly in the 2009 AA? Lauren Mitchell would have won bronze! Also, in London 2012, China would have gotten the team bronze instead of Romania. My point here is that it DOES make a difference, and that difference could have a lot of consequences long-term.

But, again, it is up to one’s own opinion. I personally am of the belief that things need to change, but in no way should my opinion be considered to be more important than anyone else’s. But I really do think that we as a gymnastics community need to promulgate this discussion a bit more.